How light therapy can treat disorders from depression to Alzheimer’s disease | Hacker News Reader

How light therapy can treat disorders from depression to Alzheimer’s disease

nautil.us

44 pointspmcpinto24 comments

My mother died of dementia (and other things naturally) a few months ago (her condition was diagnosed as Alzheimer's at one point but who can tell really).

I find it annoying when such and such an effect is describing as "treating Alzheimers" when there no cures for dementia and not real understand of most forms. All there are is combinations of drugs, therapies, and procedures that may make the person's life easier and more pleasant.

It's ironic that drug companies must use the more modest "helps relieve the symptoms of" language when talking of cold medicine but yet the hardly accurate term "treating Alzheimer's" is tossed around an awful lot.

I know someone who had cancer in their skull. The cancer is now removed, but there is some scaring and loss of feeling (i.e., nerve damage), loss of hearing, etc. Recently there was a scare that the cancer had returned (luckily it had not, but it was something caused by the earlier treatment that required further surgery). Was the cancer treated?

A treatment is not necessarily a cure, and something that can make a persons life easier and more pleasant is still a positive outcome.

I think a treatment is generally understood to be an intervention that addresses the "root cause" cause of condition. Anti-viral medications might or might not treat a cold but it would a treatment. An antihistamine is considered to be something that only addresses and relieves symptoms. I think the distinction between these approaches is pretty well recognized and by that token your friend received treatment.

Aspirin for a headache caused by the cancer in contrast, wouldn't be consider a treatment. We know there are real treatments for cancer so most people would be appalled by someone only getting aspirin or only getting pain-killer (unless things had gotten too advanced). Thus, I don't think there's really much confusion here except for some effort wade and make confusion.

I see your point, and the phrasing is a little clumsy, but is it that big a deal? I don't think anyone has misunderstood and come to the conclusion that this cures dementia.

Vancouver gets downright dreary in November - maybe I can convince my co-workers that a natural light-mo-tron would be a good office purchase.

Vancouverite here!

5000 IU of Vitamin D3 every morning works like magic for me.

Good luck getting that in Canaduh in one pill; ordered from the States.

Just curious, why ingest an amount that is so far beyond the recommended daily dosage for vitamin D (which is, I think, less than 1K IU a day?

There is a now a growing belief that the recommendations for D3 are ridiculously conservative.

Please don't. Walking on a sunny morning is a pleasure, but working for the whole day in bright artificial light is a form of torture.

How about getting outside? The days are shorter and there is less light but we get outdoors far less than previous generations. That will be a contributor to light deprivation and S.A.D.

There's nothing inherently wrong with winter. If you're willing to make time for a lightbox in the morning, you can make time for a lunchtime stroll and get outdoors at the weekend.

A lunchtime stroll is good too, but part of the point here is that the timing of the light is important with respect to circadian rhythm. As a northern latitude dweller, I leave the house in darkness and return in darkness. Bright light in the morning with my coffee kickstarts that circadian pattern at a time that I couldn't otherwise get light in winter months.

Hibernation during winter might be natural in some sense, but it doesn't fit well with modern living. I'm outside about as much as one can and still do computer-oriented work. I also, rain or shine, put in 50-100 miles per week on my bicycle in commuting / errands, which means that I get a decent baseline of exercise. But, that still doesn't cut it. It's light therapy or relocation for me.

So how would one go about building one's own lightbox? I grew up in a sunny area, and can feel the effects of SAD. Having a lightbox to improve the mood would be helpful.

Go on Amazon, and buy a full spectrum cfl. Just put it in a normal lamp, or jury rig a reflective box with cardboard and flat white paint. Total cost: $30.

I'm not sure that delivers a therapeutic number of lux, which I read in one study was much more important than color temp.

My recommendation is to go to Amazon, buy a 5 meter roll of bright white LED strip and a 6amp power supply (I found a replacement LCD monitor power supply for something like $11 and the LED strip for < $20). Cut the strip into segments and mount to particle board (perhaps with a picture frame in mind), making sure to stagger the position of the LEDs. If your board is non-conductive, you can mount thicker gauge stranded copper wire to either side of the board, and bridge the appropriate pin on the LEDA strip by soldering a short bit of wire to the power channel.

As far as electronics projects go, this one is pretty easy, and 5m of LED strip throws a lot of lux.

How close to full-spectrum are those new "daylight" LED bulbs?

They have almost no reds which is the dominant power of the solar spectrum or any other black body. But aiui this discussion is about UV not IR and you can make LEDs with impressive UV output.

Could wandering virtual sunny landscapes in something like Oculus Rift be a reasonable substitute for a light box?

Maybe it's Vitamin D [0] that's important, which you'd likely won't get from the Oculus, but you do get from sunlight and fatty fish (like Salmon).

[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D

IIRC, no. You need to get/see UV in order for your pineal gland to stop producing melatonin (what makes you sleepy). That is why most light therapy boxes say that they're "full spectrum" - they emit UV in addition to visible light.

Do you have a source for this? I'm just curious because while it sounds reasonable, a quick inspection of the light boxes on Amazon shows that many of them advertise that they filter out nearly all UV light.

my guess is that you're looking at general "light boxes" (for photo shoots). Look on amazon for "happy lamps".

http://www.amazon.com/Verilux-VT01WW1-HappyLight-Compact-Ene...

Even green light suppresses melatonin production: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11763987

I appreciate the idea behind light therapy, and I do believe it has its uses. But as far as battling seasonal mood changes, I wonder if meditation and positive affirmations would be just as effective, if not more so? There's a line in that article, "He can feel the effects when he falls off the light box wagon, as he did recently during a particularly busy time at work." By using meditation and affirmations, one could never "fall off the wagon." My hope is that research centers focus their efforts on energy healing and meditation because I know there would be massive breakthroughs in unifying spirituality, science, and medicine.

Well, there have been some studies that have claimed benefits from meditation for some forms of depression. However, this article was focused on conditions believed to be influenced by circadian rhythm. Light unambiguously has an effect on circadian rhythm, whereas meditation, maybe not so much.

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